Monday, March 25, 2013

Cindy Hattersley from Rough Luxe Perspective asked a group of bloggers including myself to do a post on creating their dream home. I have been creating my dream home in my head since I was a teenager, so naturally, I jumped at the chance. I thought it would be so easy! I would just visit my inspiration file and search out all my favourite images and voila! Well, it turned out that, as much as I love so many interiors that I see, when it comes to a home for myself, I am fussy, fussy, fussy!! So after many, many hours of deliberation, what you see here, is as close to my dream home as I am probably likely to get.

My entryway would look something like this, lots of grey weathered wood, a feeling of spaciousness and fairly sparsely furnished.

I would have one beautiful piece of furniture placed in this area, displaying a few of my favourite things.

My family room would be spacious, very comfortable and geared for easy living (picture lots of boys sprawled on every sofa, a couple of dogs following suit, a coffee table filled with the remnants of family life, empty glasses, pizza boxes... you get the picture!) There would have to be a large flat screen hidden in one of those gorgeous cupboards, a sound system in the other. As much as I appreciate technology, I don't like to look at it!

My living room would be a quiet, elegant space, where I could escape the chaos of family life from time to time and read, drink tea or chat to a friend.

My dining room would be big enough to accommodate a large table, a fireplace for winter, and french doors to be opened up for summer.

I, somewhat surprisingly, ran into problems when looking for my dream kitchen. Nothing I saw matched my dream in its entirety. So I had to improvise. I would like an island along the lines of the one above....

....a weathered wooden floor like this one....

....exposed trusses and a chandelier like this....

...and a colour palette like this one above.... If anyone sees a kitchen like.... please send it to me.... I need it to complete my dream!

I would have a beautiful courtyard leading off my kitchen for morning coffee, or a pre-dinner glass of wine.

My laundry room would be quite rustic, with a brick floor like this.

My study cum art studio would be along these lines....

... and my husband's study, something like this. (I didn't consult him on this one, I suspect he might have other ideas!).

Our bedroom would be spacious, airy and comfortable....

....with a dressing room to match....

...and a calm, elegant bathroom where I can soothe away the troubles of the day.

My guest bedroom (above) and bathroom (below) would be romantic and inviting. Would you like to come and stay?

For my boys' bedrooms, I turned to Restoration Hardware because that it one thing they really do well.

This one above, for my 15 year old...

.....this one for my 13 year old....

.....and this one for my 10 year old twins. (Just for the record, I didn't consult them either...they like the type of bedrooms you see on Extreme Home Makeover...Say No More!)

This remains my all-time favourite boys' bathroom.

I would love to have a sunroom like this leading out onto the swimming pool area.

I love this swimming pool that can be turned into a water feature when the fountains are turned on.

I would need an outside dining area close to the house...

...as well as one under the trees at the bottom of the garden.

The garden would be largely informal and a bit overgrown, mostly featuring green and grey.

So there you have it, my dream home..... no jacuzzi's, no media rooms, no wet bars... only simple family living..... just the way I like it.

Please visit the blogs below to see all of their wonderful dream homes.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Thank you for your wonderful response to my last post. I actually received a very gracious email from Pam Pierce herself which I thought you would be interested to read.

Dear Sharon,I have been trying to comment on your most recent post regarding my latest Veranda and could not figure out how to make it go thru. I wanted to write you and all of your wonderful readers to thank all of your for your comments. I am thrilled people are so passionate about design.It is exciting to know so many of your readers have followed my work and have such strong feelings about the changes in my home. Many of my clients have come to me with their second or third home and want something new, a new look, something fresh, just different.I think it is exciting to look to the future in design, but you must honor your past as well. Change is fun for me. I experiment on me and not my clients. As you know a girl always the right to change her mind. Just remember girls, if we had not been willing to change and listen to Coco Chanel we would all still be in corsets.I think constructive criticism is a good thing and I thank you all for it. Remember when doing anything in life be true to yourself.Blogging is wonderful and it has excited you all about the industry I love. Please continue with your enthusiasm.SincerelyPam Pierce

One of the things which struck me after my previous post, and which I mentioned in my reply to Pam, was that as much as our blogging community might be divided by matters of taste and style, we are very much united by our love of interior design!

Moving on to today's post....brown is not a colour which one normally associates with beauty but looking at the pictures below, I am sure that we can be convinced otherwise.

It can be introduced as a pattern....

....a stripe or.....

or my personal favourite...a plain deep chocolate brown.

Look at these pictures that follow and notice that the introduction of a single chocolate covered chair can make a room good enough to eat!

Of course...it doesn't have to be a chair. A daybed, a chaise, a sofa, an ottoman or scatter cushions in a rich brown add such warmth to an room.

I adore this bed .... brown and velvet is a match made in heaven!

Brown can also work in a kitchen as these examples show....

Stephen Gambrel wisely said that chocolate-brown fabric can help wooden furniture become part of the overall scheme with a shared color.

These beautiful interiors below have all included brown in varying degrees.

So what do you think - do you see brown as "bland and boring" or "bodacious and beautiful"?

About Me

I am married with four sons. We live in beautiful Cape Town, South Africa. Interior decorating and design has been my passion for as long as I can remember. I am also an incurable Francophile, enjoy good food and fine wine (actually any wine is fine with me) and generally living well.